“If something should happen to me, if I turn up dead by accident, robbery, or any other means, it will have been the work of the same murderers who killed my beloved son”.
In 1921, in the city of Curvelo, in Minas Gerais, Brazil, Zuleika de Souza Netto was born. Known as Zuzu Angel, she was the woman who stood up to the dictatorship through fashion and showed us that fashion is not only art, but also politics.
As a child, she moved with her family to Belo Horizonte and later spent part of her youth in Salvador, Bahia. From an early age, she developed a connection with sewing, making clothes for her cousins and relatives. Although she had no formal training in fashion (there were not yet any courses in the field in Brazil), she learned to work with fabrics through hands-on practice.
In 1943, she married the American Norman Angel Jones. The couple lived in Salvador, where their first child, Stuart, was born in 1946. The following year, the family moved to Rio de Janeiro, where their two daughters, Hildegard and Ana Cristina, were born. The marriage ended in 1960, and Zuzu devoted herself even more to her work in order to support her three children.
In 1957, Zuzu began making skirts by hand in her own apartment in Ipanema, using mattress ticking fabric. Despite the unusual material, she soon won over customers. The skirts made of mattress ticking and printed with drawings of birds were a hit and helped her become known as “Zuzu Saias” (“Zuzu Skirts”, in English). Little by little, she expanded her production, began creating other pieces, and earned a place in Rio’s high society. By 1966, her brand was already well known, and her fashion shows were beginning to attract the attention of the press.
At a time when brazilian fashion still looked to european standards in order to be valued, Zuzu decided to do things differently. Her first collection, launched in 1970 in New York City, showed the world chita fabric, northeastern brazilian lace, vivid colors, embroidery, and references to the cangaço, to lace-makers, and to brazilian women. Her dresses were a success, they were worn by actresses such as Joan Crawford and Kim Novak.
Incorporating brazilian characteristics into her clothes was what helped Zuzu when she found herself forced to fight for justice in a dark chapter of Brazil’s history.
The dictatorship
On April 1st, 1964, the entire brazilian nation woke up to the following news: President João Goulart had been overthrown by a military coup. Unfortunately, it was no April Fools’ joke. In the midst of the Cold War, the Brazilian Armed Forces seized power, with US support under the pretext of combating a supposed communist threat. Thus began a period of torture, political persecution, and imprisonment: a dictatorship that would last 21 years and be forever marked in brazilian history.
On December 13, 1968, during the government of General Costa e Silva, Institutional Act No. 5 (AI-5) was decreed, expanding the repressive powers of the dictatorship and deepening the persecution of the regime’s opponents.
From then on came the years known as the Years of Lead. Thousands of brazilians had their rights violated in the name of “fighting communism”. While some lived in fear, others would spend decades searching for answers about the fate of loved ones who had been persecuted and imprisoned during the regime.
Perhaps the designer from Curvelo never imagined that the dictatorship would also cut across her own life. Perhaps she believed that, given her prestige and social standing, she would not have to fight to obtain justice for a family member. Unfortunately, that is not what happened.
The dictatorship cuts across her life
Stuart Angel Jones, Zuzu’s son, was only 25 years old when he was arrested, tortured, and killed by agents of the dictatorship in May 1971. The young man, an Economics student at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), was a member of the October 8th Revolutionary Movement (MR-8). That was enough, according to accounts, for the agents to drag him across the yard, force him to inhale the exhaust fumes of a vehicle, and beat him. Stuart died at the Galeão Air Base. His body was never returned to his family.
The fashion show
In the midst of this situation, Zuzu could have stayed silent, could have hidden away and mourned in silence. But she decided to confront that dark period by doing what she did best: fashion.
Her next collection, shown in 1971, again in New York, broke with the conventions of a traditional fashion show. On the colorful embroidery of white dresses, drawings of angels, children, birds, trees, houses, and drums shared space with soldiers, military uniforms, caps, airplanes, tanks, cannons, jeeps, and ships. Caged birds, a sun behind bars, black doves, and armed clowns completed the images, which evoked repression, imprisonment, and the loss of freedom. The seemingly innocent designs contrasted with the violence they depicted. Zuzu was denouncing the Brazilian dictatorship and drawing international attention to the disappearance of her son.
The search for justice beyond the runway
But she did not stop at the fashion show. Even afterward, Zuzu never stopped seeking answers. She wrote letters, approached authorities, and took Stuart’s case beyond Brazil’s borders, using the international recognition she had already won to denounce the violations committed by the dictatorship.
In 1972, she received a letter from Alex Polari de Alverga, a political activist who had been imprisoned alongside Stuart and had witnessed the torture he suffered. Until then, she had been deceived by the State, which claimed that her son was missing, but alive. Alex’s letter gave her the confirmation: Stuart was dead.
In 1975, Zuzu wrote a letter to the then President of the Republic, General Ernesto Geisel, describing the torture her son had suffered and questioning the disappearance of his body. It was no longer just a matter of searching for her son, but of demanding answers from the authorities responsible for clarifying what had happened to him.
In the letter, Zuzu wrote:
“I am certain that Your Excellency, as a father and as a Christian, will understand the anguish in which I have lived for four years. The news I continue to receive about the martyrdom my son suffered is appalling. My son was 26 years old at the time.
He was arrested on January 14, 1971, taken immediately to the CISA Air Force intelligence center, and subjected to every kind of torture, including at the order of a creature of the corporation, and dragged across the yard […] he was forced to ingest toxic gases that were expelled amid continuous accelerations and braking“.
The designer also reached out to international authorities and influential figures, such as U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Through letters, documents, and contacts with the press, she sought to break the silence around Stuart’s case and bring the violations committed by the Brazilian dictatorship to an international audience.
Still in April 1975, she left in writing that, should she die in suspicious circumstances, those responsible would be the same people who had murdered her son. The statement was shared with people close to her, including her personal friend, the singer Chico Buarque, who in 1977 wrote the song “Angélica” in her honor.
On April 14, 1976, Zuzu was killed in a suspicious car accident in Rio de Janeiro. What she had written was confirmed: She was killed by the same murderers as her son. But this was only confirmed years later, when the investigations of the Special Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances found contradictions in the police inquiry of the time, flaws in the forensic reports, and witness testimony indicating that Zuzu’s car had been deliberately struck by other vehicles.
In 1998, the Commission recognized the Brazilian State’s responsibility for her death. In 2014, the National Truth Commission presented new evidence on the case. Finally, in 2025, her death certificate was officially amended, recognizing that her death was violent and caused by the Brazilian State in the context of political persecution.
Zuzu’s story is a reminder to all women who are able to fight, to resist, and to use their skills to denounce wrongdoing and call for justice when necessary: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice”.
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The article above was edited by Nina Simonetti.
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